


As Above, So Below

by ricochet



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Other, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-01
Updated: 2008-09-01
Packaged: 2017-10-07 03:13:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ricochet/pseuds/ricochet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robert Frost is wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Above, So Below

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LJ user "shirasade"](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=LJ+user+%22shirasade%22).



> Originally written for the 2008 [apocalyptothon commnuinty](http://community.livejournal.com/apocalyptothon/) on LJ.

*

Robert Frost is wrong. When it ends, the world goes in neither Fire nor Ice. Global warming does not crawl over the face of the earth igniting forests as it goes, and the polar ice caps stay nearly as they have been since the last time they blanketed everything. Plague stays mostly contained in the poor areas of the world, only killing those who cannot afford vaccination, and, at least at the beginning of the end, the crops do not fail. Earth does not fall to sudden silence. When it ends, the world goes electric, and then it goes dark.

**

 

Toshiko Sato is alive. Toshiko Sato should be dead.

She remembers Jasmin Pierce well; they all do, and she remembers the little girl's ancient friends. Tosh only saw the creatures that ended the world for a breath of time, and truthfully they looked nothing like the fairies of that summer afternoon. (If they looked like anything it was more the creatures called Gelf from the old records, but it was still only a passing resemblance.) But in that breath she tasted the same ages of time, and as she exhaled there was something beyond the understanding of humans ghosting over her skin. The only scent she caught was ozone.

Toshiko Sato is alive. Toshiko Sato should be dead.

Owen Harper is.

According to Ianto, so is 87.36% of the population of Cardiff.

***

 

Four months later, there is still no real explanation of what they were, or how they tore apart Europe and Australia, Asia and both the Americas, Africa and all the scattered islands between. There is also no confirmed information that anywhere that cannot be reached on foot is actually gone. With the sky still clothed in a constant shawl of lightning, the number of places which can be reached on foot are all within city limits.

Unless you are Jack, all the places that can be reached on foot are within a ten-block radius.

And knowing exactly what they are, and where they came from, and what the hell they wanted, if anything, really does not make a shred of difference if you are standing on the sidewalk arguing with your understandably arrogant medic when every streetlight you can see blows out the casing on its bulb before it teeters, trembles and crashes down. When telephone and electric lines tear themselves free of what anchors them and writhe over the ground as live as they ever are, knowing why there are faces in the arcs of energy buys you no extra leeway at all.

Electrocution is the kind of death Jack most despises.

If the danger is carried on glass and flying debris, there is not much to worry over. He can throw himself bodily in the way, and whoever is behind his back or under his body will be no more than bruised. Electricity is persistent. It takes the easiest route to the ground, and if Jack is a bulwark against the glass and stone and metal shards, he is only an open pathway to the sharp-toothed currents burning out of every wire and every building.

Owen is a great deal more than bruised.

Ianto manages to include everything Jack was wearing in the good doctor's funeral pyre.

Torchwood cannot keep a wall of bodies in a morgue without the power to run its refrigeration equipment.

****

 

Gwen is, hopefully, somewhere on the other side of the world.

Rhys is, hopefully, in the same place.

So far there is absolutely no way to find out for sure. The couple had taken a three week trip out of the country. Before she left, Gwen had talked extensively about how she was looking forward to being almost entirely alone. She had pulled up websites on her station, and Tosh's as well, to extoll the virtues of being away from every kind of phone and television and radio. The cabin in question was the sort of place that romanticised the idea of what Ianto's Gran had called housework in the dirt.

Jack had demanded she take her mobile with her, and he made sure to tell her Torchwood would pick up the tab to take away the most obvious excuse. He had raged for over an hour when, the day after she left, Owen had mentioned knocking her phone off her desk.

At night now, Ianto whispers the details of Gwen and Rhys's retreat to Jack in the underground dark. No phones, no computers, no television or radio or air conditioning. No electricity at all. The place had listed a wood stove and kerosene lamps as selling points.

With no way to know for sure, it should be strange that Gwen and Rhys are the easiest to believe safe and well, even if they are somewhere on the other side of the world.

*****

 

The only timekeeping devices that work with any reliability are antique watches that are old enough to be wound clockwork with nothing like a battery involved. Possibly atomic clocks are also still working somewhere, but there are none close enough to the hub to check. Even if there were, Ianto would not be tempted to leave the hub and go do so. Nor does he need to; counting his stopwatch he has three watches that work just fine.

The hub still has limited power. Enough for lights, air and most everything that is essential to keeping it running. Jack says he has never been so thankful to be a scavenger. The core systems are mostly based and entirely powered by alien technology. Whatever it was that chewed up the world never found a way into it.

Satellites in orbit are still stable in the sky, and not showing any hint of falling out of it and peppering the surface of the Earth with yet more craters. Toshiko's best guess is that they were simply too far away to take any damage.

The rift is still running under his feet, and as best he can tell, it is quiet.

Tosh is sleeping under two thick quilts on the couch where they used to eat pizza. Jack is lying awake in his bolt hole under his office.

In another few minutes he will go down to Jack. He will take Jack's coat, and hold on to him as tight as he can and breathe shallow, shallow breaths.

Just after the end, all three of them had been a constant presence on the streets of the city. They had done everything they could. At the beginning, every survivor they had gathered walked through the doors of their own houses with faces that were covered only with grief and shock. A few days later, handkerchiefs had begun to appear. In the second week some clever person had raided a hospital, or possibly a medical supply warehouse, and surgical masks became the must-have for everyone and anyone out of doors.

No one walks along the plaza anymore. If they can avoid it, he and Tosh simply do not leave the hub.

The city reeks.

They have done what they can to clear the bodies, just as every other survivor has. It ishould not be as difficult as it is, but the roads are impassable in many places, and there are no hearses, or ambulances, or flatbed trailers.

There are, however, hundreds upon hundreds of dead.

With all the ground paved, and burial at sea a quick way to destroy the closest thing they have to a dependable food source, the fires have been burning in the plaza for a long time now. The stench has not yet worked its way through the hub. Ianto clings to the hope that it will not do so.

Jack has discarded his habit of standing atop the roof and letting the wind sweep his coat back. He walks now, for hours, along ruined and empty streets.

Until a proper cottage industry economy is up and running, burning clothing is a wasteful and impractical thing to do, and so Ianto doesn't. It is well after midnight now, and tomorrow the three of them will try to get an uplink to one of the Google Maps satellites that will be orbiting by in the afternoon. Tosh will need to be well rested, even more so than he and Jack.   Ianto makes his way up the stairs, and quietly to the couch where Tosh is sleeping. He coaxes the shoes she always forgets to remove carefully off of her feet without waking her, and then he settles the quilts back around her so they will stay as they should until morning. He tidies away the scattered remnants of living in the hub full time and checks that nothing is burning that should not be.

He does this every night, and it never takes longer than it should, or long enough for him to feel prepared. Ianto stands in Jack's office and takes a last deep breath. Then, he climbs down the ladder into the little room where Captain Jack Harkness is laid out on his bed with his coat and boots still on. He hangs up the coat and bullies Jack out of first his boots and then the rest of his clothes. He removes his own clothes and folds them as neatly as he ever has, and when Jack pulls down the blankets on the bed Ianto climbs in after him and pulls them back up.

With Jack's head tucked under his chin, Ianto can hear both their breathing, and he can make out the faint splash of water in the main room. Tomorrow, after they link to the satellite, he will try to broach the subject of bringing Tosh into this little room with them. It is obscene that she should make do with quilts and a couch when there is body warmth and a bed available. For now, Ianto Jones closes his eyes and resolutely does not think of Torchwood Three as the last people to be buried in Cardiff.


End file.
